Pimiento Tea Room: Meet the owners behind this eclectic Holly Springs tea house

For owners Matt and Christy Griffith, years of dreams and planning went into Pimiento Tea Room, an eclectic tea house and restaurant that is anything but ordinary.

Matt and Christy met years ago at North Carolina State University, where they talked about how fun it would be to open a business of their own.

"For years, Matt and I had always talked about opening a place up to host people ... doing something different that nobody else was doing," Christy said.

After graduation, Matt worked for decades in the corporate world. Christy, who was always creative, made the daring decision to attend culinary school at Wake Technical Community College.

One day at work, Matt got an email from Christy that said "I made up my mind. I'm ready to open a restaurant."

Pimiento Tea Room opened in 2020 at 200 N. Main St. The house was built in the 1840s, and the owners have kept features from the past, like wood paneling, wallpaper and a giant fireplace while adding their own quirky flourishes.

The Griffiths didn't hire a designer to decorate Pimiento Tea Room. They simply incorporated features that made them smile and pieces they found by chance, like a neon STEAK HOUSE sign auctioned off by a shuttered steakhouse.

Matt recalled the couple's surprise when they won the sign for $50 in an online auction. They had to drive to the steakhouse Dunn and climb up in the attic to get the power boxes and remove the sign themselves from the side of the building.

"It was part of the adventure," said Matt, who feels the unusual decorations -- fun wallpaper, neon walls and patterns everywhere -- are just a glimpse inside Christy's creative mind.

"It's just a peek inside the mind of the chef," he said. "This is just another creative expression of Christy."

Matt and Christy have three kids -- 15, 16 and 17 -- and everyone helps in the kitchen. Their oldest daughter makes homemade scones and opens the restaurant on weekend mornings while their son does dishes and cooks brunch. Their youngest is a host and server and spends a lot of time helping Christy in the kitchen.

"It's a really great time when we're all here together," Christy said.

The inspiration behind Pimiento Tea Room

Matt and Christy wanted to bring something new to Holly Springs, creating a more accessible, relaxed version of the tea time experience.

"I've always loved the idea of high tea, but I'm not somebody who likes to get dressed up," Christy laughed. "I'm very clumsy and I would break the china ... but I love that experience of sharing food with people, because after all, a high tea experience is really a shared plate experience."

With that in mind, Pimiento Tea Room's scones, desserts, sandwiches, salads and plates are meant to be shared so all the flavors can be sampled.

Homemade scones are made in the kitchen each morning and served with flavored butters like honey scallion, cinnamon brown sugar, vanilla, butterscotch, lemonade and unicorn.

There's always a rotating, fun selection of hot teas with flavors ranging from earthy to fruity on the menu. The teas are also are worked into desserts and craft cocktails.

"That's one of my rules when we're coming up with a new dessert -- it has to incorporate the flavor one of our teas," Christy said.

The ingredients used to make everything on the menu -- all the desserts, baked goods, breads for sandwiches, jams and jellies -- are all made in house.

"We don't buy anything premade except for Duke's mayonnaise," Christy laughed. "We go through a lot of mayonnaise and we only use the best."

The menu at Pimiento Tea Room changes every week as Christy and her staff dream up new ideas. Last week's lunch menu included a vegan BBQ hummus sandwich with chow chow, corn chips and candied jalapeno and a ham and strawberry butter sandwich. On the dinner menu was a buttermilk biscuit served with pork and strawberry BBQ sauce and salmon crepes with whipped feta and lemon curd.

Inspired by southern hospitality, the tea room serves lunch, supper and brunch. There are three sandwiches at lunch and three meals to choose from at dinner. Whether you're craving something sweet, savory or both, there's always a vegan and gluten-free option on the menu.

Sunday brunch is served at 11 a.m. and features a weekly "Sunday sundae" of homemade buttermilk icecream topped with a sweet treat. In the evenings, there is live music and a secret dessert menu, which includes a twist on bread pudding and other indulgences. The bread pudding is a Pimiento Tea Room customer favorite along with the black-eyed pea hummus and Brunswick stew.

"We joke that it's three different restaurants -- the menu changes and the crowd changes" depending on what time you're there, Matt said. "Everyone should experience all three."

Reservations are only taken for special events, like Mother's Day, and for the Pimiento Tea Room's supper club, a monthly 7-course tasting menu and wine pairing that donates over 50% of proceeds to children's cancer research.

The monthly supper club raised $30,000 for cancer research in its first year and is on track to beat that record this year. It's a special event for the Griffiths, whose youngest daughter was diagnosed with cancer at age two but recovered fully to live a happy childhood.

It was actually the support they received from the community during their daughter's treatments that led Matt and Christy to open their business in Holly Springs.

Visit Pimiento Tea Room on Facebook and Instagram to stay in the know about special events.